Councillor's tech company goes bust

Ken Baguley. Photo / Brett Phibbs

A computer company headed by Auckland City councillor and Auckland Rugby Board chairman Ken Baguley has gone under, owing Inland Revenue hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Mr Baguley said Online Business Management, an information technology company he set up in 1979, had been unable to negotiate a way out, and had no alternative but to wind up. The matter goes to court next Wednesday.

The first-term Citizens & Ratepayers councillor has notified C&R president John Slater of the situation and did not know if the business failure would tarnish his political career.

C&R candidates are required to declare on the nomination form if they have been a director of a company that has gone into involuntary liquidation.

Before Mr Baguley's business troubles became public, he was talked up as a strong contender to succeed David Hay, who is expected to stand down as leader of the right-wing ticket at the October local body elections.

Mr Baguley has impressed the C&R hierarchy as a measured and effective chairman of the transport committee but has limited political skills.

Yesterday, he said he had no leadership ambitions and was unsure if he would pursue the C&R nomination for the Orakei ward.

He might instead seek a role in the new mega-transport agency for the Super City.

Mr Slater said he had still to learn the details of Mr Baguley's business problems, which would be taken into account in the ward selection.

Mr Baguley said Online Business Management was a small company with 12 staff. It offered information technology advice and acted as a back-up IT resource for companies.

The company, in which he had invested $500,000, had not shifted in time to a new breed of technology that could have created a viable business and a solution to paying back hundreds of thousands of dollars, including penalties, to the tax department.

Mr Baguley said being a councillor had not helped, and he had taken virtually nothing out of the company in the past two years.

Another high-profile rugby figure, New Zealand Rugby Board chairman and former All Black captain Jock Hobbs, was, until last September, an executive director of Strategic Finance, which was placed in receivership last week owing $417 million to about 13,000 investors.